German builders have welcomed plans announced yesterday by the likely new German governing coalition to set up a €500bn special fund to address the country’s failing infrastructure.
It came after early talks between leaders of the first-place Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), and likely coalition partners the Social Democrats (SPD).
The parties also said they would table a motion in parliament to let Germany’s 16 individual states borrow as much as 0.35% of their economic output to invest in improving their economies.
They will table the motions next week to capitalise on the current seat-share in the Bundestag, which dissolves on 25 March.
Because the motions require changes to the debt brake in Germany’s Basic Law, its constitution, the motions will need a two-thirds majority to pass.
“We are aware of the scale of the tasks ahead of us, and we want to take the first necessary steps and decisions,” said CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who is in pole position to be Germany’s next chancellor, reports DW.
“We are finally ending the investment log-jam in our country,” said SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil.
Collapsing bridges
Concerns have been growing over Germany’s ageing transportation infrastructure, with as many as 5,000 Autobahn bridges needing to be renovated or rebuilt, DW reported in June.
But they rose sharply after the collapse of Dresden’s Carola Bridge in September.
The Soviet-era bridge completed in 1971 had been assessed as good before the collapse, and a technical investigation revealed that it failed because of hydrogen-induced stress corrosion cracking owing to moisture ingress during the construction phase.
City officials warned that many other bridges could be vulnerable because the construction method was common at the time the bridge was built.
‘Prepared for the future’
Felix Pakleppa, general manager of the Central Association of the German Construction Industry, welcomed the CDU-SPD coalition plans.
“The planned investments are the modernisation offensive that is urgently needed now,” he said today.
“We expect not only economic stimulus, but also a strengthening of our national competitiveness. The construction industry is happy that the black-red coalition wants to take this step. Our country would be better prepared for the future. At the same time, however, it remains the task of the new federal government to structurally put the federal budget in order, because permanent tasks must fundamentally be financed from the regular budget.”
Pakleppa added, however, that money alone was not enough.
“The processes must be faster, the bottleneck is the planning and administrative capacities. Especially with infrastructure projects, planning and approvals take considerably longer than the construction itself. Authorities and planning offices must be expanded in terms of personnel. This is the only way we can build the planned investments.”
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